Unheralded

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Earth Day Rice Krispie Treats

Ask a roomful of kids what their favorite treat is and you might get dozens of answers. But if you mention Rice Krispie bars, the response would be pretty positive, I suspect. Show me a kid who doesn’t like Rice Krispie bars and I’ll show you a kid who doesn’t like sweets. I know that when growing up, the bars …


Unheralded

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Shrimp Pesto Linguine

Pesto and pasta. Now that’s a combination that’s surely made in heaven. And if you don’t believe me, see for yourself. There is nothing simpler than combining those two with the likes of seafood, sausage or ribs in a yummy sauce that might also include some tasty veggies. One of my favorite combos is pasta, pesto and shrimp with peas. …


DARREL KOEHLER: The Prairie Gardener — When It’s Time To Plant

Spring is often fickle in its arrival. We may have several nice, warm days followed by snow and freezing temperatures. Other years, we may have no problem. This year has been a mixed bag. On May 15, 1981, we had a real taste of having it both ways. We had an early thaw, and many gardeners had started their planting. The …

RUSS HONS: University Of North Dakota Indian Association Time-Out Wacipi 2015, Part 2

The University of North Dakota Indian Association Time-Out’s 45th Wacipi Powwow, which has been taking place at UND’s Hyslop Sport Center since Friday evening and continued Saturday, concludes today.  Photographer Russ Hons captured these scenes at Friday night’s Grand Entry.

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Pepperjack Meatloaf

There was a time that the only place you could get a good meatloaf sandwich was at home. But these days, more and more restaurants are featuring this comfort food on their menus. I was reminded of this recently when watching the Travel Channel, which regularly has a show about a particular kind of food that has gained popularity. The …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — We Cleaned Up The Air But We Couldn’t Clean Up The Politicians

Let me start with this. I was sitting in my recliner last Sunday evening watching a rerun of the old Lawrence Welk show from the 1960s. It was one of Lawrence‘s “theme shows,” and the theme this week was Los Angeles. As the show neared an end, after renditions of surfer songs and Hollywood movie themes, the band and singers …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Worcestershire Bison Burger

Bison or buffalo burgers have been quite popular in many households across the Midwest or Great Plains for quite a few years, even showing up on some local restaurant menus. But in the past five years or so, they’ve also become a hit in areas where you wouldn’t expect, including many of our nation’s largest cities. That’s not surprising to me, …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — My letter To Fred Rogers, And His Famous IPOY Reply

I met Fred Rogers, the children’s television icon, on a newspaper assignment in the fall of 1995. Several months later, I sent him this letter and received his famous reply. June 22, 1996 Dear Fred, … I have something to ask of you. The last several years have been a very profound time of intense personal pain and great healing, …

LINKS TO NEWS WORTH YOUR TIME: Marijuana’s Time Is Here

It’s time to legalize pot for medicinal use CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta sees signs of revolution for legalizing medical marijuana everywhere, from attitudes of everyday Americans, to hospitals and health research organizations, to op-ed pages, to the dark allies where politicians do their thing. Marijuana’s time for legalization is here, he says. http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/16/opinions/medical-marijuana-revolution-sanjay-gupta/index.html Dunkin’ Donuts continues assault on Minnesota To bag a …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Baked Tortellini Casserole

There’s no doubt that Italians know a lot about pasta. In fact, pasta might be a food that Italians know more about than pizza or tomato sauce, both of which have a relatively recent history. Despite what you may have learned in history class, Marco Polo did not discover pasta in China and bring it back to Italy in the …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — Vinyl

Saturday is Record Store Day, an annual event, begun in 2007 to recognize independent record stores around the country. Instead of downloading a piece of music or ordering a CD from Amazon, some people still get in their cars, drive to a store and buy a record album (yes, that’s what we used to call them) on vinyl. Through cassette …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — Fiction And Real Life In The Battle Of The Bulge

In my novel, “Every Common Sight, the battlefield experiences of my character, Wendell Smith, are based on the real-life horrors of World War II veterans I interviewed in the 1990s. The following is one example of how heartbreaking truth morphed into fiction. I’ll never forget the sight of Earl Crumby — a small, wiry fellow with thick black hair and glasses …

DARREL KOEHLER: The Prairie Gardener — A Spring Gardening Checklist

Spring has indeed sprung as gardeners prepare for another season. However, it may be a difficult year with hot, dry conditions expected by many weather forecasters. We will see. We are enjoying a very early spring with lots of wind, which sucks up the little soil moisture we had over the winter. So have a hose ready. Lawn chores lead …

Natasha Thomas: Challenging Conversation Corners — It Ain’t That Simple (And I Ain’t Stupid)

“Keep it simple, Stupid.” We’ve all heard those words. They seem to be the universal model for everything: — Don’t clutter a PowerPoint presentation with too many slides. — Don’t ruin a perfectly good song with overly complicated riffs and vocal pyrotechnics. — Overdone special effects in a movie look ridiculous. You get where I’m going with this. Unfortunately, sexism, racism, any …

ABOUT US: Welcome, Bev Benda, To The Fish

Bev Benda begins her first blog on unheralded.fish with an insightful look into how Jordan Spieth used positive thought and words to help win The Masters golf tournament last weekend. Spieth is just 21 but mature beyond his years. Benda is a licensed registered dietitian and board certified coach in Grand Forks, N.D. She is the owner of My Coach Bev, …

Bev Benda: My Coach Bev — Accentuate The Positive

“Be There!” “Bite!” “Make It!” These are some of the words I heard Jordan Spieth use to coach himself on the final round of the Masters Golf Tournament. The golf ball came under Spieth’s verbal command, and the grounds of Augusta National surrendered to his brilliant 18-under-par round, giving the 21-year-old his well-deserved Green Jacket. What I saw Jordan Spieth …

JEFF OLSON: End Of The Civil War — 150 Years Later, Part 2

The surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant 150 years ago today April 9 was a milestone event in the end of the Civil War. Among the anniversary events to commemorate the event were a re-enactment of Lee’s last clash with Grant’s troops and of the Confederate surrender in the McLean Virginia farmhouse. Also …

JEFF OLSON: National Cherry Blossom Festival, Part 2

The National Cherry Blossom Festival concludes today. For 80 years, Washington, D.C., has celebrated the 1912 gift of cherry trees to our nation’s capital by the mayor of Toyko. Each year,  big crowds gather around the Tidal Basin and National Mall to view the springtime magic of the blooming cherry trees. This weekend, Washington’s famous cherry blossoms are hitting peak bloom, according to …

JEFF OLSON: National Cherry Blossom Festival

The National Cherry Blossom Festival concludes today. For 80 years, Washington, D.C., has celebrated the 1912 gift of cherry trees to our nation’s capital by the mayor of Toyko. Each year,  big crowds gather around the Tidal Basin and National Mall to view the springtime magic of the blooming cherry trees. This weekend, Washington’s famous cherry blossoms are hitting peak bloom, according to …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Meatballs and Sunday Marinara

Sunday dinner has always been something special for a lot of people — or at least there was a time when it was. That’s because Sunday traditionally has been the day of the week when you could count on everyone in the family getting together to sit down and share a meal. And in these busy times when both parents …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Chicken Chili With Corn

Many thoughts can dance across your mind when you celebrate a birthday. And the older we get — this includes me — the more we think about how long we will live. But if you are like some of the people who live in Okinawa, Japan; Ikaria, Greece; the Nicoya Penisula of Costa Rica; and Loma Linda, Calif., it might …

JEFF OLSON: End Of The Civil War — 150 Years Later

The surrender of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee to Union Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant 150 years ago today was a milestone event in the end of the Civil War. Among the anniversary events to commemorate the event were a re-enactment of Lee’s last clash with Grant’s troops and of the Confederate surrender in the McLean Virginia farmhouse on April 9, …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — Anything

“Anything mentionable is manageable,” Fred Rogers famously said. Anything? What about this? You are a young mother, a government worker in Washington, D.C., and pretty much without warning comes a post-partum psychotic break. You end up running naked on a bridge over the Potomac and might not have survived if not for the courage and kindness of strangers. What about …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — To Re-Read Or Not To Re-Read

It doesn’t happen very often, but I’m re-reading a novel I read years ago.  It’s not just any novel.  It’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.” It’s not for nothing that Harper Lee won the Pulitzer Prize for it. Like much of the reading public, I’m looking forward to the publication of Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman in July.”  But July is …

DARREL KOEHLER: The Prairie Gardener — Macy’s Flower Show

Can you think of a better way to get a jump on spring than going to a flower show? Macy’s 2015 Flower Show, which opened March 22 and ended Sunday at its downtown Minneapolis department store, has been around since the 1960s and, perhaps, even longer. It is the tops in the Midwest. (Macy’s also has flower shows at its …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Ham Tetrazzini

There’s more to leftover baked ham than sandwiches, bean soup and egg bakes. That’s not to say those aren’t great choices for the tasty remains of your Easter dinner’s main course. I know, those are three of my favorite things to make when we have leftover ham. Another is boiled dinner, which also contains potato, rutabaga, carrots, cabbage and a …

NANCY EDMONDS HANSON: After Thought — Sincerely Held Beliefs

The days leading up to Easter are always steeped in talk of religion … but this year’s Holy Week conversations have truly, you might say, taken the cake. From Indiana and Arkansas to, yes, North Dakota, daily news coverage has included the word “Christian” more often than in any prior seven days in American history. But you couldn’t really say …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Peach-Glazed Ham

A baked ham wouldn’t be anything special without a good glaze — and not one of those that comes in a packet with the meat. I’m talking about a glaze that is homemade, just like Mom and Grandma used to make. A couple of neat things about those kind of glazes is that they are easy to prepare — taking …

RUSS HONS: Lunar Eclipse

Lots of people are posting photos this morning of the lunar eclipse. I didn’t get up to watch it, but I was up briefly, around 5 a.m ., so I stepped out the front door and snapped a picture as it was happening. This is the first of two lunar eclipses visible this year in the United States. Skywatchers in the western third …

NATASHA THOMAS: Challenging Conversation Corners — I’m Not ________ist BUT…

Never have I heard anything good follow such a sentence … “I’m not sexist, BUT … I just don’t think women make good business owners.” “I’m not homophobic, BUT … I just can’t support that lifestyle.” “I’m not racist, BUT … I just plain don’t like black people.” No joke, I’ve heard people use all three statements. There are totally …

LINKS TO NEWS YOU MIGHT FIND INTERESTING — Wasps, Water, Drought And California

This wasp nest housed a kingdom of killers A 12-year-old Australian found a 220-pound wasp nest and lived to tell about it. The nest was home to 100,000 of the stinging insects and haunted a household for months. The nest was 30 cubic feet huge. http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/worlds-largest-wasp-nest-found-tasmania California’s drought: Heat compounds a changing climate and the outlook is nothing but bleak …

TIM MADIGAN: Anything Mentionable — How Michelangelo Came To Fort Worth

I’ve spent the last eight months researching an authorized history of Fort Worth’s Kimbell Art Museum, work that has taken me to New York City, the California wine country and finally to Genoa, Italy, (tough duty, I know) to visit with legendary architect Renzo Piano and his team. It has also been my privilege to spend many hours reminiscing with …

CHEF JEFF: One Byte At A Time — Creamy Mac ‘n’ Cheese

Meatless meals were almost unheard of in 1950s and 1960s America. In fact, it wasn’t until the early ’70s that vegetarianism started to take root. I went through a phase in my life when meat didn’t touch my lips. It was in the mid- to late 1970s. I ate a lot of vegetables, fruit and fish. Even when I had …

JIM FUGLIE: View From The Prairie — Well, We Were Warned …

Here’s an updated version of a story I wrote here a month or so — and for Dakota Country magazine’s current issue. Now we know that there will be no bighorn sheep season in North Dakota this year, for the first time since 1983. Nor will there be one in the foreseeable future. So, add bighorn sheep to the list …

TERRY DULLUM: The Dullum File — A Southern Life

Hundreds of books have been written about Elvis Presley.  Yes, hundreds.  I’ve read quite a few, including what many consider to be the definite two-volume Elvis biography, Peter Guralnick’s two-volume “Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love.” But here are some things I never knew (or had forgotten) about the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, I learned from reading  Joel …

RUSS HONS: High School Baseball — Grand Forks Central 3-10, Valley City 2-3

Grand Forks Central swept a doubleheader from Valley City in Eastern Dakota Conference high school baseball action Tuesday at Kraft Field in Grand Forks, N.D. The Knights won the opener 3-2 behind the pitching of Brock Reller (9 strikeouts) and Caleb Binstock. Pitchers Wyatt Eagleson and Ryan Piche combined to capture the nightcap 10-3. On the hitting side in the …